Klima

2011 

2010

United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 16/CMP 6)
   29 November  - 10 December  2010, Cancun, Mexico

Internationale Klimapolitik

2009

was a crucial year in the international effort to address climate change. 
A series of UNFCCC meetings took place thoughout the year, designed to culminate in an ambitious and effective international response to climate change, to be agreed at the 

United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15) in Copenhagen, 7-18 December

Copenhagen Accord  

• The first round of negotiations this year took place in Bonn, 29 March-8 April. 
• The second meeting took place in Bonn, 1-12 June. 
• Informal consultations were held in Bonn, 10-14 August. 
• Two further sessions will be held prior to Copenhagen:
•  28 September-9 October in Bangkok and 
• 2-6 November in Barcelona. The Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) will operate in full negotiating mode in 2009 to advance work towards meeting their respective mandates. Important ongoing work under the Convention will also be taken forward in 2009 by SBISBSTA. COP 15 - Quick Information for Parties, observers and press and 

• Proposals by Parties for a protocol to the Convention and amendment to the Kyoto Protocol 
  Five Parties have recently made proposals for a protocol under the Convention pursuant to Article 17 of the Convention. The respective proposals by Parties are available here. 
  The secretariat has also received twelve proposals by Parties for amendment to the Kyoto Protocol pursuant to Articles 20 and 21 of the Protocol. The respective proposals by Parties are available here.
  

• COP 15:    Marking a watershed moment in history, the 15th Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, popularly known as COP15, will convene on 7 December 2009, in Copenhagen, to respond to one of the greatest challenges facing humanity: climate change. COP 15 offers an unprecedented opportunity to tackle the climate crisis while also catalyzing the lower-carbon, green growth that is the foundation of long-term economic prosperity. Reaching a deal by the time the COP15 meeting ends on December 18 will depend not only on the political negotiations but also on the public pressure from around the globe. Public support must be galvanized. To do this, the United Nations has launched “Seal the Deal”. The conference traces its origins to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, which aimed at coordinating international action against climate change. Six years later the Kyoto Protocol was signed in Japan and two years ago signatories gathered in Bali, Indonesia, to launch negotiations for stronger action against climate change. This process will now culminate at the meeting in Copenhagen. More on COP 15 event   More on the Negotiations

• NEW YORK Summit on Climate Change, 19 - 26 September, 2009:  "The objective of the Summit on Climate Change, which I am convening on 22 September, is to mobilize the political will and vision needed to reach an ambitious agreed outcome based on science at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon  

  
  
  Nearly 100 world leaders accepted UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s invitation to participate in an historic Summit on Climate Change in New York on 22 September to mobilize political will and strengthen momentum for a fair, effective, and ambitious climate deal in Copenhagen this December.
  

"There is little time left. The opportunity and responsibility to avoid catastrophic climate change is in your hands," Mr. Ban said, closing the day-long Summit on Climate Change.

The Summit marked the first UN visit for the Presidents of China and the United States as well as the newly elected Prime Minister of Japan. For the complete list of speakers, please see Programme.Read the Secretary-General´s summary of the day!     

• Background
• Programme and Live Statements
• Newsroom
• Video Statements
• Leadership Forum
• Live Coverage
• Media Accreditation
• Climate Week
• UN Gateway on Climate Change

• September 2009: About Seal the Deal!  The UN-led Seal the Deal Campaign aims to galvanize political will and public support for reaching a comprehensive global climate agreement in Copenhagen in December. Climate change affects us all. Nine out of every ten disasters recorded are now climate related. Rising temperatures and more frequent floods, droughts and storms affect millions of people’s lives. This is set against a backdrop of financial and food insecurity. On December 7, governments will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark to respond to one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. The main question will be how protect the planet and create a green economy that will lead to long-term prosperity. Reaching a deal by the time the meeting ends on December 18 will depend not only on complex political negotiations, but also on public pressure from around the globe. The United Nations has launched “Seal the Deal” campaign that encourages users to sign an online, global petition which will be presented by civil society to governments of the world.  The petition will serve as a reminder that our leaders must negotiate a fair, balanced and effective agreement in Copenhagen, and that they must seal a deal to power green growth, protect our planet and build a more sustainable, prosperous global economy that will benefit all nations and people THERE IS NO TIME TO WASTE: STAMP YOUR VOTE AND SEAL THE DEAL!

• Business for Climate Change:  The UN Global Compact is a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. By doing so, business, as a primary agent driving globalization, can help ensure that markets, commerce, technology and finance advance in ways that benefit economies and societies everywhere. See what Global Business leaders are saying about Seal the Deal “Caring for Climate" is a voluntary and complementary action platform for UN Global Compact participants who seek to demonstrate leadership on the issue of climate change. It provides a framework for business leaders to advance practical solutions and help shape public policy and attitudes. Chief Executive Officers who endorse the initiative are prepared to set goals, develop and expand both strategies and practices, and to publicly disclose emissions through the UN Global Compact’s reporting mechanism.

• COP 13 - 13. Vertragsstaatenkonferenz der Klimarahmenkonvention und 

  MOP  3  -  3. Vertragsstaatenkonferenz des Kyoto-Protokolls 

3.- 14.12. 2007, Bali

• Vom 3. - 14. Dezember 2007 fanden auf Bali die 13. Vertragsstaatenkonferenz der Klimarahmenkonvention und die 3. Vertragsstaatenkonferenz des Kyoto-Protokolls statt. Die EU strebt an, einen umfassenden Verhandlungsprozess, die "Bali Roadmap" zu vereinbaren. In ihr sollen die wesentlichen Verhandlungsinhalte beschrieben und ein Verhandlungszeitplan festgelegt werden. Bis 2009 sollen die Verhandlungen für ein neues und umfassendes, auf dem Kyoto-Protokoll aufbauendes Klimaschutzregime abgeschlossen sein, damit nach dem Ende der ersten Verpflichtungsperiode des Kyoto-Protokolls 2012 keine Lücke entsteht.Beschluss -/CP.13 - Aktionsplan von Bali   Die Klimakonferenz auf Bali hat zentrale Weichen für die Verhandlungen eines Klimaregimes für die Zeit nach 2012 gestellt. Nach intensiven Verhandlungen und mit 24 stündiger Verspätung konnten sich die Vertragsparteien auf den Bali Aktionsplan verständigen. Er unterstreicht den Willen aller Vertragsparteien, angemessen zu einem künftigen Klimaregime beizutragen und legt fest, dass alle Staaten über ihre mess- und überprüfbaren Aktivitäten berichten müssen. Gemeinsam mit einer Reihe von anderen Entscheidungen bildet er die Bali Roadmap, das Verhandlungsmandat. 2009 auf der Klimakonferenz in Kopenhagen sollen die Verhandlungen abgeschlossen werden. Download hier: pdf 109 KByte

  • Ergebnisse des Klimagipfels auf Bali - Rede des deutschen Bundesminister für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit Sigmar Gabriel - Bundestag, Berlin, 17.01.2008 "... Die Ergebnisse der Klimakonferenz auf Bali bilden eine gute Basis für den Verhandlungsmarathon der nächsten zwei Jahre. Die Ergebnisse sind wichtige Leitplanken, um 2009 auf der Klimakonferenz in Kopenhagen ein zukunftsweisendes weltweites Klimaabkommen zu erreichen. Die Eckpunkte sind:

    • Die Industrieländer müssen vorangehen und bereits bis 2020 die Emissionen der Treibhausgase drastisch reduzieren.

    • Aber auch die Entwicklungsländer, insbesondere Schwellenländer wie China und Indien, sollen auf einen klimafreundlichen Entwicklungspfad einschwenken.

    • Für den dazu notwendigen Technologietransfer an Entwicklungsländer wurde erstmals ein konkretes und umfassendes Arbeitsprogramm verabschiedet.

    • Entwicklungsländer wie Brasilien, welche die Entwaldung bekämpfen, werden finanziell unterstützt.

    • Der in Bali beschlossene Anpassungsfonds soll den Entwicklungsländern helfen, mit den Folgen des Klimawandels besser fertig zu werden...."

• COP 13. The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali (COP 13, CMP 3, SB 27 & AWG 4)

• Bali - Next Steps for Action on Climate Change Representatives from over 180 countries met in Bali, Indonesia, from 3 to 14 December 2007 to get negotiations going on a new international climate change agreement.
  

  The United Nations Department of Public Information provided full coverage of the Conference, including webcasts of main events and press conferences in Bali, radio coverage, photos and News Centre stories. In addition, for the first time, the UN introduced an experiment in on-line reporting from Bali for the entire duration of the Climate Change Conference. These dispatches can be found under Bali Reports.

  New Climate Change Roadmap Launched in Bali

   

Countries agreed to launch negotiations on a new global deal to address climate change after two weeks of intensive negotiations at the Bali Climate Change Conference.The parties to the Climate Change Convention arrived at the consensus decision after around-the-clock negotiations that concluded a day after the conference was supposed to end. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the Bali Agenda “a pivotal first step toward an agreement that can address the threat of climate change, the defining challenge of our time.” He applauded “the spirit of cooperation shown by all parties to achieve an outcome that stands to benefit all humanity.” The Bali “roadmap financing.” calls for two years of negotiations that will end in 2009 on four key areas,mitigation, adaptation, technology and It is hoped that the new agreement will be ratified by countries in time to take effect when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.  UN Climate Convention Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer, said the Conference delivered what was promised--to launch negotiations, to set an agenda for the negotiations, and to set a deadline for the negotiations. “Bali delivered what it needed to deliver.”  He called the resulting decisions “ambitious, transparent and flexible.” He said the decision of the parties referred to the science of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that it helped bring in important partners from business, finance and the United Nations system. He added that the Bali decision breaks down the strict separation of actions between developed and developing countries. “This is an incredibly exciting agenda.” It was not an easy negotiation and on the last day it even took the special intervention of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yodhoyono and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to exhort delegates to complete what seemed like hopelessly deadlocked talks.   In addition to launching negotiations toward a future agreement, countries also agreed in Bali on a number of important measures that can begin immediately. This includes an agreement that will allow the Adaptation Fund to fund projects in developing countries that will help people cope with the impacts of climate change over the next four years. The Fund, currently worth over $30 million and which can grow by as much as $300 million by 2012, will get its resources from a two per cent levy on all transactions of the Clean Development Mechanism.

• Anup Shah, COP13—Bali Climate Conference, GlobalIssues.org, Tuesday, January 01, 2008 

  The UN conference on climate change held in Bali, Indonesia in December 2007 led to a final agreement known as the “Bali Roadmap”. The conference, more officially known as COP-13, or Conference of the Parties, Thirteenth session, 3-14 December 2007, Bali, Indonesia. The meeting drew more than 10,000 participants, including representatives of over 180 countries and observers from intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, and the media.
  The Bali Roadmap outlined a new negotiating process to be concluded by 2009 to feed into a post-Kyoto (i.e. a post-2012) international agreement on climate change. The Roadmap included a decision to launch an Adaptation Fund as well as further decisions on technology transfer and on reducing emissions from deforestation.
  But the conference was also accompanied by controversy, including

• The US position being at odds with most of the rest of the world

• Talk of developing countries’ responsibilities (such as China and India) while rich countries (the source of the problem) have made little progress, themselves.

— Marwaan Macan-Markar, US Herded Into Consensus in Bali, Inter Press Service, December 15, 2007

Campaign groups such as Friends of the Earth, many of whom were at the talks themselves, were disappointed 
with the outcome, saying targets were watered down to mere footnotes in the final text.

The mainstream British media, as well as other European outlets had been quite critical of the US stance and tactics. 
As IPS also noted,

Pakistani ambassador Munir Akram, chairman of the G-77, told journalists: “We, the developing countries, have had an uphill battle at this conference to protect our legitimate interests. We had to fight every inch of the way to secure our objectives.”

He even hinted that threats, “including trade sanctions,” had been made. While Akram did not elaborate, European diplomatic sources involved in the negotiations revealed that U.S. delegates had, at one point, introduced issues such as “good governance” in the developing world as a condition for Washington to be part of the Bali Roadmap.

— Marwaan Macan-Markar, US Herded Into Consensus in Bali, Inter Press Service, December 15, 2007

What were the kind of objectives the developing world was trying to ensure? That they were not scapegoats for climate change. For many, many years now, it has been recognized that the rich nations have been mostly at fault for climate change, because their greenhouse emissions have lingered in the atmosphere for decades.

Some have called this a natural debt owed to the developing world 
(just as the developing world have a financial debt to the rich).

For some rich countries to want to avoid action until countries like India and China are subject to similar targets has been seen by much of the world as actually being unfair, especially as the rich nations have not reduced their emissions much.

For example, the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is quoted here at length:

Responsibility needs rights.

The tragedy of the atmospheric common has been the lack of rights to this global ecological space. As a result, countries have borrowed or drawn heavily and without control. They have emitted greenhouse gases far in excess of what the Earth can withstand. This was because they could emit without limits or quotas and were “free riding” on this natural capital. Some researchers have called this the “natural debt” of the North, as against the financial debt of the South.

This is the science and the politics of CO2. One tonne of CO2 emitted in 1850 is the same as a tonne emitted today. The greenhouse gases … have long lifetime in the atmosphere; these gases are still warming the atmosphere, at any given year. The ‘sinks’—forests, oceans and soils—are the only cleaners of this dirt. The net emissions add up to the space that a nation has appropriated in the global atmospheric common and therefore its responsibility for the climate change.

Calculated in terms of the total emissions of each country, since the early 1900s, we find that every living American carries a natural debt burden of more than 1,050 tonnes of C02 (see graph: Cumulative CO2 emissions). In comparison, every living Chinese has a natural debt of 68 tonnes and every living Indian, a mere 25 tonnes. Therefore, even with all the talks of India and China catching up with rich world in terms of total emissions, the fact is in terms of natural debt it will take many more decades before this happens.

This principle was accepted by the climate convention, which agreed that the rich world had to reduce its emissions to make space for the poor to grow. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol set the first, hesitant and weak, target for reduction by the rich countries. But this agreement has been more of less reneged on. The per capita emission of CO2 from fuel combustion in the US is still roughly 20 tonnes per year; between 6 tonnes and 12 tonnes for most European countries. This is not comparable to the per capita emissions of China, roughly 4 tonnes and 1.1 tonnes in India.

— What equals effective, Down To Earth Magazine, CSE, December 15, 2007

(The above article also notes the disparities within nations, including countries such as India, where the wealthy do consume far more than the rich, and that needs addressing too.)

CSE also points out that India and China are not that energy inefficient as often believed:

Myth 1: China and India are energy-inefficient and therefore grossly polluting. However, recent reports show this “belief” is founded on myths. The World Bank, in its October 2007 report on growth and CO2 emissions, finds that India is 1.5 times more efficient than the US in terms of emissions calculated in purchasing power parity terms. Highly-abused China is slightly more inefficient than the us— despite being the world’s largest manufacturing hub (see table: Comparative emissions efficiency).

— Efficiency / sufficiency, Down To Earth Magazine, CSE, December 15, 2007

(The second myth they felt was “Efficiency, not sufficiency, will cut emissions.” They argue that while efficiency is of course important, there are examples where say car emissions have become better but people have been driving more, thus overall driving up emissions.)

In addition to the various links above, also see the following:

• Climate Change Special from Down To Earth Magazine, by the Centre for Science and Environment, December 15, 2007 issue. This 17-part article looks at various issues on the politics of climate change, leading up to Bali.

• Business in Bali: The science is clear, it's high time to sort out the politics, from the same Down To Earth, December 15, 2007 issue, is a shorter version.

• Climate Justice and Equity from this site goes into this developing country perspective in a bit more detail.

• Bali Updates from the Third World Network provides more detailed look at the negotiating politics from the developing country perspective.

More from GlobalIssues.org on Climate Change - Conferences of Parties (COP): 

• Vienna Climate Change Talks  27 - 31 August 2007:  The fourth session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG 4) and the fourth workshop under the dialogue on long-term cooperative action to address climate change by enhancing implementation of the Convention took place at the Austrian Center Vienna (ACV), Vienna, Austria on 27-31 August 2007

• IPCC AR3 Klimaänderung 2001
• IPCC AR4 - AGII: Kenntnisstand über künftige geografische Auswirkungen des Klimawandels
• IPCC AR4 - AGII: Kenntnisstand über künftige systemische Auswirkungen des Klimawandels
• IPCC AR4 - Arbeitsgruppe I: „Wissenschaftliche Grundlagen“
• IPCC AR4 - Arbeitsgruppe II: „Auswirkungen, Anpassung, Verwundbarkeiten“
• IPCC AR4: Klimaänderungen 2007
• IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4): Climate  Change 2007 The AR4 Synthesis Report has been released on 17 November 2007, Valencia, Spain   Summary for Policymakers of the AR4 Synthesis Report Watch the webcast of the press conference Mr Pachauri's presentation at the IPCC Press Conference United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon speech to IPCC Plenary 
• Three full reports are available online (see  below). Hardcopies of the Summaries for Policymakers + Technical Summaries are available for free in the 6 UN official languages upon request to the IPCC Secretariat. Hardcopies of the full reports can be purchased from Cambridge University Press. A limited number of free copies are available for academic institutions from developing countries and countries with economies in transition upon request to the Secretariat.
• Working Group III Report "Mitigation of Climate Change" (4 May 07 - Bangkok)
  
• Working Group II Report "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability"  (6 April 07 - Brussels) 
• Kernaussagen IPCC-Bericht - Auswirkungen, Anpassungsstrategien, Verwundbarkeiten ist der 2. Bericht des Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Er wurde am 06.04.2007 in Brüssel  veröffentlicht und liefert eine umfangreiche Analyse, wie sich der Klimawandel auf Ökosysteme und Gesellschaft auswirkt, welche Auswirkungen zukünftig zu erwarten sind und welche Effekte mit  Anpassung und Emissionsminderungen erreicht werden können. Eine Zusammenfassung dieses Berichts mit einem Schwerpunkt für Europa ist hier abrufbar: Working Group I Report "The Physical Science Basis"  (2 Febr 07 -Paris) - Full report online +   Powerpoint files containing the figures from the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), Technical Summary (TS), and individual Chapters are now available.